Your average home workout loads up on plenty of bodyweight exercises, and for good reason: Pushups and squats are fundamental pieces of any fitness routine, and you need to hold mastery over them.
If youre in the gym chasing big arms, theres a good chance youve spent plenty of time doing biceps curls. And hey, you cant be blamed. After all, when most people think of big arms, they definitely think big biceps.
If youve been hitting the gym for years, whether its to do squats, play basketball, jump on boxes, or just run, theres a good chance that, at some point, youve experienced knee pain.
If you really want to pop out of your T-shirts and stand out on the beach this summer, you need more than arm workouts and chest training. You need to spend some time working your shoulders, because, truth be told, thats where upper body strength really starts.
The deadlift is one of the gold standard lifts in the gym. Its pretty simple, really: You load a barbell up with weight, grab it with a shoulder-width grip, plant your feet on the floor and lift.
If youve ever been in a big-box gym before, youve seen plenty of guys doing classic leg exercises like squats and lunges and deadlifts. But theres a good chance youve also seen a host of leg-training machines, one of which seems simple enough.
If you want to build strength and muscle in the gym, you generally need to do one kind of training and use one particular tool, like a barbell or dumbbell or kettlebell. If you think about boosting your metabolism, you generally use a very different tool, like a treadmill or a rower.
Youve been there before. You pick up a bag of groceries and figure you can walk them from your car to your house pretty easily. Thing is, when you put the groceries down in your house, youre tired.
When most people think of building the a powerful, strong body, they think about adding muscle on their chest, arms, and shoulders. They also think of doing a handful of classic exercises, moves like bench presses and deadlifts, and squats, and curls, and pullups.
If youre like most gym-goers, you dont necessarily want muscles on top of muscles on top of muscles. And you dont want to look like a distance runner, either. Instead, you head to the gym chasing that toned beach body look. And really, thats the look of an athlete. And that means youve got to do more than lift weights and do cardio.